Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1887-02-18
AFTER NIGHT THE DAWN.

bowed her head YEARLY upon her hand,
and looked around the bare, comfortless
room, with its hard benches, curtainless
windows, and rusty, broken stove, with
shudder of d sgust.
There were days-and this had been
one-when every Der of her sensitive
being shrank from association with the
motley crowd of urchins, and from con-
tact with the dirty, dog scared books,
the grimy desks, and dingy walls; but
she never allowed these feelings to in
fuence her; the duties of her position
were conscientiously performed the
more SO, perhaps, because they were so
diEagreeable.
she had dismissed school an hour
earlier to-day, ostensibly to enable her to
correct the compositions handed in for
to-morrow's read ng; really because she
had seen Roy Carlton drive by, and
knew that he would return to ask her
company for an hours drive behind his
handsome bays; and she had tod her
self that she would-because she must
refuse, henceforth and forever all things
that he might ask of her; and she
wished to have little time to strengthen
herself, to 'have her dark hour unseen"
before she should shut the gate forever
between that world of ease and happi-
ness and, more than oil else, of Roy's
love, and her werld of poverty, loneli-
ness and sorrow.
She could not help but love him, he
had laid so many drifts of sunshine
across her otherwise Swallowed pathway,
had been such rock Of refuge in her
desert of friendlessne's since she came,
over year ago, to this dreary little vii.
lage to earn her living by teaching
She had not chosen this vocation, not
because she lik Il it, for she did not, bat
because she felt that she was prepared
for it, and there seemed to be no place
for her elsewhere in the ranks of wo.k
els.
She wasnot fitted to do battle with the
grim fend of poverty; she had, until
two years before, "fed on the roses, and
lain in the lilies of life" Then came
the death of her father, followed almost
Immediately by that of her mother, and
she was left unprepared to face the world
alone.
Her fathers wealth, which she always
supposed from their style of living to be
ample, faded away before the demands
of his creditors like snow in the spring
time. Her high sense of honor would
not allow her to hold back even the old
homestead and household furniture, so
dear from the associations clustering
around it, and reservihg but one or two
articles, she allowed the rest, even her
piano, to be sold.
Her summer friends drifted away one
by one, and she noted their departure
with scarcely sigh over their detection
Was it because she realized of how little
worth was their evanescent friendship
or had her heart, suffering a deeper
wound, become dead to the smartlng of
these lesser hurts?
Harry Vance had been her ideal of
gentleman She had cherished for h; m
strong friendship, which, before her
fathers death, had hidden fair to ripen
into love; his attentions had been very
lover-like, and this small world in which
the two moved had already, in magma
ton, coupled their names together, when
the clouds of misfortune shrouded her;
and he, with some trite sentences of con-
dolence upon his tongue, had stepped
nimbly out of their shadow, probably
congratulating himself that he had not
gone so far but what it was still easy to
recede.
She sighed, not for him, but for her
shattered ideal, when she saw that he
sought out a shallow, brainless favorite
of fortune, and sought 10y vigorous
courtship to obtain her hand in marriage,
and possession of the property he knew
she held in her own right, and in that
sigh exhaled the last lingering perfume
of the friendship Elice Gray had felt,
not Tor Harry Vance, but for the man she
had imagined him to be; and in It's place
grew loathing and contempt for Harry
ance, the fortune hunter, intensified an
hundred fold, when, later, she heard of
the debts and duns that harrassed his
pathway. For, strictly upright and hon
orable herself, she could tolerate no dis
honesty in others, ard in her vocabulary
theft and debt without means or intcn-
ton of pay ent were synonymous terms
"Many Il heart is caught in the re.
bound" proved true in this case, for FL
lice had came to this little village to lose
the heart that had never really been in
Harr}'s keeping.
She knew Roy would ask her to be his
wife, and she had allowed herself to
dream of how h ,ppy she could be with
him; with wha a blessed sense of rest
and peace she could creep into the shell
ter OF his manly arms and lay her head
upon his loving breast But now the
awakening had come, and the dream was
over. She had loved him so entirely for
himself, for that great, generous heart of
his, that seemed lar e enough to take in
all mankind as brother, that she had
not once thought of the difference in
their rcumstances, for he was rich as
she was poor
Now she had heard her name coupled
with the obnoxious terms adventures
and 'fortunc hunter, and the prophecy
that "1f Mr.. Carlton MARI d her he
would soon know, as did all others, that
it was his wealth that won her."
She did not know that the remark had
been made expressly for her ear, had
been made, too, with the unuttered hope
that its barbed bitterness might ranklt
in her heart. for had she not dared TO-
kindly bat Enthusiastically, refuse the at
tentions of the speakers son2
Keenly sensitive to the opinions o
others. she might yet have dared thei
ccnsure, if this latter suggestion had no
given her pause. She loved him so trul,
she could not bear that he should thinl
of her, even for moment, as she thought
of Harry Vance; better that they should
part, at once and forever. This wal
what she had told herself, again ant
again, every hour of that long day and
night.
''If she was sure, quite sure, she TOLD